The Enemy
by SoEasilyObsessed
Summary: An unknown visitor gives Katniss a well-needed reminder


Today is the day that my mockingjay contract is fulfilled. The words I wrote down on the paper long ago become acts. I Kill Snow.

I let the guards from 13 lead me down a narrow hallway that leads to the courtyard where he is being held. The man who forced me into the games, twice. Who cause innocent children to die. Who tainted their childhoods by making them watch the games. Who let us districts suffer through hunger while the capitol thrived on full bellies, even forcing themselves to vomit so that they could fill themselves more than once in a night. The man who I'm going to kill.

I walk out into the courtyard and I see him chained to a fence, poised for my arrow to pierce his heart. His face mocks me, looking at me as if he is daring me to shoot the arrow which I hold in my hand along with my bow.

The crowd cheers when I come out. I look around and see President Coin standing on the balcony, waving at the sea of faces below her. She probably expects me to do the same but I don't, my mind is on other things. Like my sister becoming a human torch. Gale's expression when the peacekeepers caught him, telling me to kill him. Finnick's screams when he got mutilated by the Mutts. The stumps on Bogg's body where legs should have been. And things stretching even farther back like Wiress' slit throat that no longer sang "tick, tock". Mags' face before she walked into the poisonous fog. Glimmer's unrecognizable face, distorted by the stings of the tracker jackers. Rue pulling the spear from her body. Anything that president Snow and the Capitol have ever done to hurt me and the people I love.

All of these actions and so many more are repeatedly telling me that I should just shoot him now. I have the motive. I have the means. I have the crowd watching anxiously, awaiting the moment. I have a whole army on my side in case anything goes wrong.

I raise my arrow and point it at his eyes, as if he were a deer that I was hunting. Before I shoot though, I recall a memory from before I became the mockingjay.

I was in District 13, still on medical treatment after the escape from the Quarter Quell. The schedule written in purple ink on my arm told me I should go to a meeting first in room E103. I was going to skip it, like I skip the other meeting I am told to go to, but Prim told me it was important, that I would probably want to meet the person there. So I went to room E103, hoping the person inside would bring me news about Peeta.

Inside the room was a desk and two chairs on opposite sides of the desk, facing each other. Occupying the farthest chair was a girl. She looked to be about my age with long raven black hair and piercing blue eyes. Something about her eyes seemed so familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.

She studied me for a moment, and then said, "Hello Katniss. My name is Rome Callaway." Her name didn't sound familiar, but something about her indicated that we have met before. Almost as if she could read my thoughts she asked, "Do you remember me?" I shook my head. "It was almost a year ago, you were on your victory tour after the 74th Hunger Games."

I remembered her then; she was on the platform where the dead tributes family from those games usually stands. Her eyes were bleary then, from crying many times and her form was weak and thin. She looked stronger now, sharper. "I was representing Cato, standing in place of his family." she told me, "I didn't know what to say to you then, but I do now. I need to tell you my story, tell you what I've learned." I leaned back in my chair as she begins her speech.

"Cato's mother was very young when he was born, only 16 years old, his father was 17. The year he was born his father got chosen as tribute and he died in the arena. His mother died when he was 10 due to a fatal strand of influenza. He was on his own when I found him, I helped him enroll in a training school, the same one I went to. We became best friends, and eventually we fell in love.

"When he was chosen as tribute for the Hunger Games I was shocked. I didn't know what to do or to say. I wish I could've volunteered to go in his place, even though I know that would be impossible. I went to see him in the Justice Building; he confessed to me how scared he was. I told him he needed to stay strong and to win so he could come home soon. The last thing he told me as the Peacekeepers dragged me away was that he loved me.

"While he was in the Games he changed. He wasn't the same Cato that I knew, the one I loved. The Arena changed him, made him murderous and violent. That wasn't the real him. When he died they sent me back his body. I allowed for there to be a public funeral, to bury the boy that was their tribute, but I held my own funeral. I put all the things that reminded me of the real Cato in a big wooden box and I buried it under the tree where we had our first kiss. That's where he's really buried.

"When you came to our District I was so sad and hurt but most of all I was angry. I realize now that it wasn't you that I was angry at. You and I aren't enemies. The enemies are the people who force children to kill other children and who change a person's soul so that it fits into their games. The enemy is The Capitol."

The memory fades, but Rome's voice still echoes through my head. _Remember who is._

I reposition my bow and release, letting the arrow fly through the air until it reaches its target with a satisfying thud. President Coin, a look of shock instilled on her now dead face, tips over the edge of the balcony and into the crowd below. She is as bad as President Snow, wanting to create another Hunger Games for capitol children. Under her rule, we would just fall back into the same routine of blaming people and killing others because no one can see who the true enemy is. President Coin was going to let history repeat itslef. She is the enemy.


End file.
